Labor leaders blamed Black workers for their own exclusion

Evidence

AFL president Samuel Gompers lectured Black workers that “organized labor” was not “antagonistic to the colored race.” He claimed to know of only a “few instances … where colored workers are discriminated against.” Gompers increasingly blamed Black workers for their depressed economic condition in order to exonerate the discriminatory actions of his unions. — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 723

Categorization

• SEED: Gompers as a case study in how discrimination rationalizes itself by blaming the discriminated — a pattern applicable to contemporary labor and tech industry exclusion.